Honey Cafe
Honey Cafe hums with energy down a Takapuna side street. Impeccable poaching and a beetroot-hollandaise revelation — only the towering cuboid rostis disappoint, engineered for Instagram over crunch.
Scores
So it quite literally was the day of sun, an opportune moment for an eggs benedict brunch. Today's subject was Honey Cafe, tucked down a side street branching off the main trunk of Takapuna. Insert bees to honey reference as a metaphor for its popularity; our party of four was sent on a wander as we queued for a table.
Buzzed to score a seat on the periphery of the cafe, roadside with a fresh breeze moseying through to keep us cool. The ambiance of the cafe was positively humming; the atmosphere warm, friendly and welcoming.
Apparently bees are remarkably punctual, so I quickly inferred that the front of house staff were not of the anthophilic kind; but they did have an amiability that reminded me of a certain honey-fiendish bear. I placed my order for a $7.50 oat milk iced latte and a $29 bacon (extra crispy) eggs benedict.
The food took a hot minute, and arrived a little haphazard; tbf it was absolutely bustling. Spotted a particularly tantalising looking chicken bacon waffle, yet, the moment I locked eyes (seriously looks like a face in the picture) with my delectable breakfast, any indecision I harboured vanished faster than my will to exercise after a day at work.
The first bite was exquisite; the beetroot sauce a harmonious sweetness to complement the savory and crisp, egg, rosti and hollandaise smothered bacon. The eggs were a paragon of poaching, and the hollandaise, a perfectly smooth and buttery richness. The fresh spinach leaves washed away my food-indulgent guilt, so my only gripe was that the towering twin rostis made me feel like I was doing a volume optimization problem in 2001.
Crunch is proportional to surface area; taller cuboid shaped rostis minimise surface area with respect to volume; crispness penetration into rosti is inversely proportional to thickness. The net result is more mashed potato on my plate than I have egg, bacon, and hollandaise/beet sauce to cope with. I feel like the decision was grounded more in instagrammability than tastebudding goodness. My benedict-crometer read a sound 8.5 / 10 for the food, and a good but not great 7.5 for the coffee. Accounting for atmosphere, arbitration reveals a final madrosti_ score of 8.4 / 10.